J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > Turin, Como, Lugarno, Maggiore ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Eight Sketches of Gondo, including the Stockalpertum 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Eight Sketches of Gondo, including the Stockalpertum’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 88 Recto:
Eight Sketches of Gondo, including the Stockalpertum 1819
D14314
Turner Bequest CLXXIV 87
Pencil on white wove paper, 186 x 111 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘87’ top left, ascending left-hand edge and ‘284’ top right, ascending right-hand edge
Stamped in black ‘CLXXIV 87’ top right, ascending right-hand edge
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains eight distinct sketches of Gondo, the first Swiss village (also known as Zwischbergen) on the road to the Simplon Pass road after crossing the Italian border.1 The village nestles within a deep ravine and Turner’s has drawn successive views on the approach from the east, before turning to look behind him from the west. Visible in at least three of the vistas, particularly the study in the bottom left-hand corner, is the Stockalperturm, a seventeenth-century building with a high square tower, built by the Stockalper family of Brig for the shelter of travellers in this part of the Alps. Further sketches of Gondo can be found in the Passage to the Simplon sketchbook (Tate D16936, D16944 and D16969; Turner Bequest CXCIV 25, 29 and 43a).
For a general discussion of Turner’s journey to the Simplon Pass see the introduction to the sketchbook, and also the introduction to the Passage of the Simplon sketchbook (Tate, Turner Bequest CXCIV).

Nicola Moorby
January 2013

1
Crimi 2007, p.36 note 47. Compare also the print after Major James Cockburn, Le Village de Gondo in Views to Illustrate the Route of the Simplon, London 1822, pl.XXXI.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Eight Sketches of Gondo, including the Stockalpertum 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-eight-sketches-of-gondo-including-the-stockalpertum-r1142835, accessed 19 April 2024.